001 STAR TREK: Crisis on Colony Alpha V
by Dan Bivens
Summary: A WHAT IF? tale regarding Charlie X nearly destroying billions as well as the Cosmic Truth of the Infiniverse discovered by Spock's mind meld with Thasians!
1. Chapter 1

**CRISIS ON COLONY ALPHA V**

Chapter 1

CAPTAIN'S LOG, STARDATE: 1532.9. Something strange has just occurred to the USS ENTERPRISE. We were on our way to meet the science vessel ANTARES, for the beaming over of a young man named Charlie Evans when, suddenly, some sort of unexplained energy eruption in space has seemingly sent us back in time by nearly a day. Currently, Cmdr. Spock is using scanners and computers to determine the exact nature of this cosmic event. While Dr. McCoy is currently conducting a cursory exam of some exposed crewmembers to make certain no lasting physical, or psychological, damage was sustained.

"Mr. Spock, have you determined just what happened and how it could've reversed time like that?" Captain Kirk asked with a tense sigh to match the strained expression on his otherwise handsome face.

"Partially, Captain", Commander Spock said stoically as he swiveled away from his station and toward his seated commanding officer, a single slanted eyebrow lifting as the only outward expression of anything other than total logic. "It would appear that, as we came within transporter range to await the ANTARES, the subatomic structure of the fabric of space-time was, in essence, pulled apart. The resulting disruption of basic matter-energy matrixes were, at that point, in a situation where anti-quarks outnumbered quarks for precisely .002147 seconds, which, in turn..."

"Mr. Spock, Mr. Spock, just tell me why this, this... 'matter-energy matrix disruption' would send us back nearly a day in time to a point before the ANTARES even entered this region. And did it have the same reversal-of-time effect on surrounding space?" Captain Kirk interjected gently with a lifting of one hand, palm out, in the gesture of someone wishing to be spared a particularly longwinded explanation by the Vulcan.

The strictly emotionless expression on Spock's pale (but with an ever-so-slight tinge of green) countenance held, for the shortest of instants, what Captain Kirk had come to identify as the human half of his first officer and friend peeking out, slightly insulted. Then Spock responded as succinctly as possible, for him, regarding such an awe-inspiring situation. "Yes...for as far as our sensors can scan. Not just on vessels previously in warp field-induced travel, such as the ENTERPRISE and, presumably, the ANTARES, but for the perceivable star systems as well."

"And you have no explanation for this event, Mr. Spock?"

Folding longish arms across a narrow chest, resplendent in the blue of his uniform tunic, Spock lifted both slanted brows in a mildly disquieted fashion. "I shall have to take further sensor readings and recalibrate our computers for the dissection of something so unexpectedly alien to known physical laws before any such explanation can be attempted, Captain."

No longer in the mood to argue the inarguable, Kirk turned smartly on his boot heels to head toward the turbolift doors and ordered, "Then I suggest you do so, Mr. Spock, because I want an answer before Starfleet Command starts pressing me for one."

"Affirmative, Captain."

"Excuse me, Captain", Lt. Nyota Uhura gently injected, just as Kirk was about to briskly pass, "but Starfleet Command has already begun asking questions. At least, the nearest starbases have, sir."

"Great", grumbled Kirk under his breath, then loud enough, Lt. Uhura to hear, "Tell them that we're working on it and a full report will be forthcoming. Got it, Lieutenant?"

"Aye, sir", Lt. Uhura nodded while reinserting the communications earpiece and allowing delicately manicured fingers to adeptly dance across her station's controls in order to comply.

At that same moment, Kirk had stepped through rapidly parting turbolift doors while grabbing and twisting the tactile interface handle and saying, "Sickbay."

Minutes later, several decks down, the turbolift soon deposited Kirk within walking distance of the main double-doors that led into Dr. McCoy's domain.

A very busy one at the moment...

"All right, you can go back to your duties, too," a fatigued Dr. Leonard H. McCoy said as yet another crewman exited. "Next!"

Ensign Pavel Chekov hopped up on the just-vacated biobed, its diagnostic wall panel immediately denoting an array of vitals. The good doctor asked, "So, Ensign, what the hell were you doin' when this whatever-it-was hit?"

"Actually, I vas in the bowling alley." the young Russian, not yet promoted to bridge work as a navigator, declared drolly.

"Well, I'll try to hurry so you can get back and bowl the last couple of frames. Wouldn't wanna screw up your 'average'," Dr. McCoy quipped in his patented deadpan manner, while using a handheld medi-scanner to more closely analyze Ensign Chekov.

"Thank you, Doctor."

Just then, through double-doors hissing swiftly apart at his rapid approach, Captain Kirk entered to stand just beyond the busy sight of crewmembers awaiting biobed exams by McCoy and Nurse Christine Chapel.

"All right, Ensign", Dr. McCoy said with a snap to his tone and cupping the deactivated medi-scanner in one hand, "you can go."

Without a word, Chekov hopped off as enthusiastically as he'd gotten on, noticing his commanding officer and reacting like the green recruit he still was.

"Keptin, sir!"

"At ease, Ensign," Captain Kirk halfheartedly ordered, as Chekov relaxed and proceeded out of sickbay. "Well, Bones?"

"Christine and I've examined fully one-fourth of the crew, those who stood the most chance of being exposed to...whatever." Dr. McCoy clearly considered this cosmic situation nothing short of a personal inconvenience that he waved away with his free hand.

"And?" Captain Kirk pressed.

"And nothing," Dr. McCoy snappishly replied. "No radiation exposure, no cellular destabilization, no DNA degradation, no..."

"All right, all right," Captain Kirk interjected with a sneer and a sharp hand gesture, "no need to rattle on like Spock."

Suddenly stiffening, one of his arched eyebrows lifting in a wise old owl fashion, Dr. McCoy muttered, "Now, there's no need to get nasty, Jim. You did ask."

Somehow Bones knew just how to help Kirk relax in the tensest of circumstances. "I take it our resident Vulcan still hasn't figured out what went on out there?" Dr. McCoy said even as he wagged a finger for the next no-doubt-healthy-as-hell crewman to lie down on the biobed.

"Not yet, Bones, but you know how he is. He never makes a commitment until he's analyzed every last piece of data," Kirk said, planting balled fists on his hips as McCoy waved his trilling medi-scanner over a clearly healthy patient.

"And reanalyzed it," snorted McCoy even as he finished and signaled for the crewperson to stand and exit. "You know, you don't have to be a Vulcan science officer to know that what happened was damn sure not natural and definitely not a good thing."

"Yeah, I know," Captain Kirk said with a sharp inhale as he prepared to turn, "but Starfleet's gonna want to know every detail anyway. Keep up the good work, Bones."

"Gee, thanks," Dr. McCoy said with a half-smirk as Captain Kirk swept out of sickbay.

END OF CHAPTER 1


	2. Chapter 2

**CRISIS ON COLONY ALPHA V**

Chapter 2

Down in engineering, Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott was personally overseeing repairs and bypasses needed to correct short-circuit and burnouts brought about by the recent disruption of space-time. Locally, if not galactically. "Tha's it, lads", he said with his characteristic Scottish burr, sweat glistening on his wrinkled-with-worry brow. "Get those systems switched o'er fast as ye kin. We may need to zip outta here like our tails're on fire at a moment's notice."

"Mr. Scott, damage and status reports," Captain Kirk called above the din of rabid repair.

"Would you want the long version or the short, sir?" Scotty asked as he slowly spun to face his commander with a groan and a grimace.

Thinking about how Spock and then McCoy had gone off on technical tangents when giving their reports, Captain Kirk swiftly responded, "Short, Mr. Scott. Very short."

Meanwhile, up on the bridge, Spock was fervently, yet still quite logically, working to figure out exactly what had caused the disruption he'd earlier reported to his captain, not just because it was his duty and an order, but because his scientific curiosity was piqued.

But his duties as science officer would now be intruded upon by his duties as first officer, when Lt. Uhura reported, "Incoming message, Mr. Spock...from the ANTARES."

Suddenly, the scientific curiosity gave way to a simpler curiosity as he stood and proceeded to the center seat while calmly commanding, "On screen, Lieutenant."

"Aye, sir," Uhura replied even as Spock took his stiff-backed place in the captain's chair with an expression that left little doubt that the Vulcan could command as adequately as Kirk.

The viewscreen's image of starry space shimmered away to be replaced by the slightly distraught visage of the commanding officer of the ANTARES.

"Captain Ramart, I presume you find yourself wondering why you are approaching a day earlier than scheduled," Spock said in a steady monotone.

"Yes", the ruggedly handsome ANTARES commander replied haltingly with an expression of complete confusion. "We weren't supposed to reach this sector for another ten to twenty hours. What's worse...I can't for the life of me remember what, exactly, we were going to do at this rendezvous even though my own log states that I requested it."

"Interesting," Spock said almost to himself with an emblematic lift of one slanted brow.

At that moment came the barely audible hiss of turbolift doors causing everyone, including Spock, to swivel in its direction to see Captain Kirk bound onto the bridge. Spock stood in order to relinquish both command and the center seat to the man in the gold-green uniform tunic.

"Captain Ramart?" Kirk wondered aloud even as he planted himself firmly in front of his command chair, scowling at the larger-than-life image on the viewscreen. "Report, Mr. Spock."

"Obviously, the ANTARES has entered our immediate space, and, apparently, Captain Ramart does not share the same recollection of recent events as ourselves."

"But how can that be?" Kirk asked loud enough to be heard by Ramart, who still appeared perplexed. "Captain...although we're still not quite sure ourselves, I think I need to let you know what has transpired."

Several severely slow-ticking minutes later…

"That explains a lot," Ramart said with a scowl, "but I still don't understand why you seem to be the only ones with any memory of all this."

Already heading back up to the second tier of the bridge, in order to once again begin in-depth analysis, Spock had left Kirk's side, even as Kirk, himself, now sat in his center seat.

"My science officer's gathering data on that now, but it seems clear to me, at least, that it was by some cosmic design that we remember. But you say you have no orders or records regarding the bringing of a Charles Evans over to the ENTERPRISE?"

"No," Ramart said with a single shake of his head. "In fact, according to our records, a passenger by that name was beamed down to Colony Alpha V a few hours ago. Apparently he has distant relatives there. After all, he'd been marooned alone..."

"On the planet Thasus for fourteen years," finished Kirk with a yeah-we-already-know tone to his voice. "We already seem to be aware of that much...even though we shouldn't."

While Kirk continued to explain the situation to the commanding officer of the ANTARES, Dr. McCoy sent the last of the crewmen back to their posting prior to the mysterious cosmic event as Chapel stepped to his side.

"Well, Christine, looks like we dodged a phaser blast on that one. I just hope Spock and Jim can figure out just what the hell happened and make sure to avoid it," he exhaled wearily.

"What exactly did happen, Doctor?" Chapel asked innocently with furrowed brow and slight tilting of her blonde-haired head.

Giving her his patented stare, McCoy bemoaned, "Why ask me? I'm a doctor, not a professor of quantum physics."

END OF CHAPTER 2


	3. Chapter 3

**CRISIS ON COLONY ALPHA V**

Chapter 3

At that very moment, many light-years away on an Earth colony planet designated as Alpha V, the adolescent subject of this ship-to-ship discussion continued to exert more than a little reality-manipulative control over not only the global surroundings of this world, but those of worlds and ships well beyond. With one purposeful exception.

"That's it," sneered the skinny kid in the oversized wraparound patchwork coat as he surveyed an entire city from the immense window of his cousins' high-rise residence. "Be afraid, fools. Even as the arrogant Captain Kirk and his Mr. Ears come to figure out what I've done. To them. To interstellar space. To Earth Colony Alpha V. I want them to figure it out. I want them to come here."

"Charlie, please," the oldest of his cousins pleaded with an agonized grimace. "We can work this out. You've been alone so long...you just need to...adjust to others and trust..."

"No!" screamed a suddenly enraged Charles Evans as he spun on booted heels with eyes rolled upward beneath an intently scowling brow thus unleashing Thasian-induced mental powers. "You have no control over me! I can do anything! Anything!"

"Arrrrrgggggggg!"

As his oldest cousin, Robert Walters, screamed in extreme pain, filling the family room and horrifying his wife and two pre-teen children, his arms and legs were telekinetically twisted until the sound of snapping bones and wrenching joints could be heard with sickening clarity.

"Stop it, Charlie, stop it!" Robert's wife, Marlee, shouted loud enough to be heard above such nauseating sounds. "We're your family!"

"My family?" exclaimed Charlie as he lost psychic control over the brutalized Robert long enough to address this new indignity. "The only family I was forced to have were bodiless beings who could never physically touch me nor allow me to physically touch them! Where were you? Were you there when the Thasians coldly treated me like some lost animal to be taught tricks? Were you there when, no matter how great my power became, I still lived in utter loneliness in an endless wilderness? Huh?"

"We didn't know, Charlie," Marlee whimpered, even as she saw her husband slumped in a heap like some broken doll cruelly cast aside by an ill-tempered child. "How could we? But if we had known...we would've rescued you. We would've brought you to Colony Alpha V. You know this, you must!"

"All I know, Cousin, is that while I was fending for myself for fourteen years, you were here on this crowded world without a care. I should kill you for that. I should make you all go away. But I won't. Not yet." Charlie sadistically spat through a mask of scorn.

With the slightest exertion of psionic force by the seventeen year old, torturous waves coursed through Marlee's nervous system, almost as agonizing as Robert's snapped limbs, as Charlie then returned his attention to the matter at hand...both on Alpha V and far beyond.

"But first...I have some time to mend. Time that, had I not peered into my immediate future before being beamed aboard the ENTERPRISE and changed its course, would've wound up returning me into the noncorporeal embrace of the Thasians."

As if on cosmic cue, many light-years distant, Commander Spock straightened at his scanner hood and half-turned to address his anxiously pacing commander. "Captain, I may have something."

"Great, Mr. Spock, let's have it," Captain Kirk said as he hurriedly reached his science officer's side.

"According to all the collected data and computer analysis of same…"

"Spock, just tell me in less than a hundred thousand words."

Stifling the desire to point out that it would not have taken such a massive amount of words, Spock promptly elaborated. "I have every reason to now believe that the source of the space-time disruption experienced over such a wide range, involving ships, starbases, and solar systems, had the same Human source."

"Human source, Spock?" Captain Kirk asked, puzzled.

"Yes, Captain. Apparently the seventeen-year-old passenger scheduled for transporter handoff, Charles Evans, has psychic powers well beyond anything this ship and crew has encountered since the events of Stardate 1312.4."

The very mention of that tragic stardate sent grief and guilt coursing through Kirk as the unforgettable face of his friend and top officer, Gary Mitchell, flashed through his mind. Finally the ENTERPRISE commander quickly called forth every ounce of his training to stand tall and probe further. "Are you suggesting, Mr. Spock, that Charles Evans was somehow...mutated into an omnipotent being?"

"Unknown for certain, Captain," Spock stated succinctly, then continued. "There have been reports of superhuman or supernatural entities on the planet Thasus where he was rescued."

Having already heard such very early in his career, Kirk pensively nodded, while half-sitting on the red railing running along the upper tier of his bridge, then allowed his eyes to once again gaze at the viewscreen's display of starry space. The ANTARES had long since streaked away at warp speed.

"If that's the case, Mr. Spock," Kirk began as he cautiously drew his deduction, "then we dare not let Mr. Evans run loose on such a Human-inhabited planet as Alpha V."

"Correct, Captain", Spock said with no hint of emotion. "To allow such a powerful individual free reign over an entire planetary population would be akin to allowing an infant access to explosives."

"Which means we've got to get there before that 'infant' strikes a spark that could ignite half a galaxy," Kirk said as he stood.

Before Spock could respond, Kirk had already made his way back to his center seat and, swiftly sitting, ordered, "Mr. Sulu, as soon as Scotty gives us the green light, I want maximum warp or better. We've got to get to Earth Colony Alpha V...before it's too late."

Roughly a half-hour later, Mr. Scott's crack engineering team had made warp engines operable again. Followed swiftly by Lt. Hikaru Sulu, recently transferred from the physical sciences to the helm, sending the vessel streaking off at Warp 7 in a route that would bring it just outside the star system where Colony Alpha V was located.

As fast as they were traveling, it would still take two to three full days before the ENTERPRISE could drop to sublight and cruise into orbit about the blue-green, very Earth-like planet at space-normal velocities. Two to three days before Kirk could head up an away team that would not only include Spock and McCoy, but at least two armed security guards.

Under normal circumstances, beaming down to such a long-established Earth colony world, Kirk and the others would never carry anything more than concealed hand phasers.

This time they would carry phaser twos on heavy stun. Although, if necessary, Kirk wouldn't hesitate to order phaser settings to kill.

Captain Kirk would not leave anything to chance. Even though such weapons might prove utterly ineffective, a man of action like James T. Kirk would never meet such super-powerful opposition without a means to fight back.

END OF CHAPTER 3


	4. Chapter 4

**CRISIS ON COLONY ALPHA V**

Chapter 5

"Idiots!" Charlie snickered sinisterly, shaking his head in disdain, while not only telepathically keeping track of the ENTERPRISE away team hundreds of meters below, but visually as well. "They really think their energy weapons can harm me? That I can't simply shield myself from their attacks? Even shield this whole building from their starship's weapons? I could reach out with my mind and swat their vessel out of the sky with less effort than someone might take to shoe away a flying insect. Should I kill them now, Cousins? Be merciful? More merciful than I have with both of you? Hm?"

Even as Charlie half-turned toward his distant cousins Robert and Marlee Walters, he reached out with his power and instantly healed the physical and neural damage he'd thus far done, making Robert and Marlee whole and pain-free once again.

He would probably torment them some more a little later since, in his narrowed viewpoint, they had left him alone for so long on a world whose only inhabitants were bodiless beings of energy; beings who'd long ago lost any sense of compassion or capability of warm Human-like touch.

Robert Walters made certain his arms and legs were, truly, no longer broken, even as the memory of such severe pain still tugged at his forethought. "Charlie, please, you can't do this. It isn't right. With the power you have...you could create a Utopia throughout the galaxy. Warlike races, like the Romulans could be psychically convinced to become fast friends."

Now fully turning toward them, his ludicrously skinny arms folded across a laughably sunken chest, the oversized patchwork coat still wrapped about his diminutive form, Charlie Evans laughed aloud. "Do you really think I should devote myself...my power...to mere galactic servitude? A power that lets me do anything...be anything...take anything? How small and insignificant you truly are, Cousin. Once I've amused myself by torturing, then destroying, those from the orbiting starship...then the starship itself...I'll return my full attention to you. Then again..."

"Yiiiii-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

Robert's scream resounded off the walls, causing the two pre-teen children to cry and cower within the nurturing embrace of their equally-terrified mother as virtually every bone in Robert Walters' body was simultaneously crushed by the sheer force of Charlie's evil will.

"Ha-ha-ha-hahahaha!"

At the same instant that Charlie Evans' vile laughter mingled with the shrieks of searing pain from Robert Walters, Kirk led the landing party, each member through the entrance to the ground floor of the building. Each with their phasers in hand. Except for Spock, who was still scanning with his tricorder.

McCoy, still scowling with pensively knitted brow, said, "Jim, did you happen to notice that what few people we came across on the streets seemed..."

"Scared out of their minds?" Kirk finished, his own brow now knitted and his face now glowering. "Yes, Bones, I did. I also noticed that their eyes were practically pleading for help, just like the few people in here." He gestured about the ground floor area with his phaser as the people; probably residents of the apartment building, all looked nearly frozen in fear.

Spock glanced at them as emotionlessly as a scientific purist would, then continued with his tricorder scans that were totally concentrated upon Charles Evans five floors above their collective heads.

"I don't suppose, Spock, that your tricorder can, somehow, set up a feedback of some sort to hide our exact location in this building," Kirk asked in a hushed aside to the Vulcan next to him.

Without hesitation, Spock shook his head; his dark eyes still locked upon the small screen's readouts as his still-trilling tricorder intensified its scans. "Negative, Captain. My continued analysis of the psionic energy being expended by Mr. Evans indicates that not only could we not 'shield' against him, but the protective shields of the ENTERPRISE would prove just as ineffectual."

"And the ship's phasers on full?"

This time, Spock actually looked up, glancing into the questioning eyes of his commander, before silently shaking his head then, once again, concentrating his total attention upon his tricorder screen's data.

Heaving a very heavy sigh, noticed by not only Dr. McCoy, but also the two security guards, Kirk finally ordered, "Let's go, gentlemen. We have a duty...to this planet... these people. To Starfleet and the Federation."

Moving as one, the small group of men stepped through the silently parting doors of a typical elevator.

Kirk found himself, out of habit, reaching for a tactile interface handle that was not there and reminded himself that this was not a starship turbolift. Then he reached out a forefinger in order to tap a touch-sensitive button for the fifth floor.

Finally, this time taking care not to sigh outwardly, Kirk stiffened while tightening his grip on the phaser in his right hand. Its forefinger lightly making contact with the trigger-stud in preparation for unleashing a beam of phased energy so powerful that it would instantly dissolve and disrupt matter at the molecular level.

Disintegration.

Though the thought of extinguishing the life of a seventeen-year-old boy troubled Kirk, not to mention McCoy who, as a doctor, was sworn by the Hippocratic Oath to do no harm…

The thirtyish starship commander nonetheless would not hesitate to do so if it meant saving millions if not trillions of innocent lives.

Sometimes being in command was much more daunting than many outside observers realized, especially when that commander has been given a mandate to destroy the threat with extreme prejudice.

"He's moving, Captain."

That single statement from Spock, hooded eyes still glued to the small screen of his tricorder, was more than enough to cause the team to significantly tense up even as the elevator slowed to a smooth halt at the fifth floor.

"Don't hesitate to fire," Kirk commanded of not only the two security men behind him, but of McCoy standing at his side. Nothing more needed to be said.

END OF CHAPTER 5


	5. Chapter 6

**CRISIS ON COLONY ALPHA V**

Chapter 6

With a centuries-old ding sound, the elevator's doors swiftly parted and, reacting instinctually, the entire team opened fire as four bright crimson beams of disintegrative energy converging as one in the direction of a seventeen-year-old boy.

No one was really surprised to see that none of the concentrated energy beams came any closer to the skinny kid than half a meter due to what appeared to be a protective bubble of psionic energy about Charlie Evans.

First Kirk then, a split-second after, McCoy, all ceased phaser fire, followed a moment later by both red-shirted guards. Spock stopped his tricorder scans, letting it hang to one side, while slowly pulling his own phaser from his hip. Though, logically, there was no reason to believe his single phaser could do any more than the previous four, somehow Spock's years of experience brought about the habitual displaying of his weapon.

"That's right, Mr. Ears", a smirking Charlie Evans remarked satirically, as his telepathic powers picked up a stray thought or two from the Vulcan's otherwise orderly mind, "it is a waste of time to shoot me. Nothing can harm me. But I can do a lot of harm."

First, in order to demonstrate his superiority over everything, a wildly grinning Charlie rolled his eyes upward beneath a tightly knitted brow while also pointing the forefinger of one hand at one, then the other, then another, of the phasers.

Not surprisingly for Spock, based on all the data he'd already gathered from the scans from his tricorder, each phaser became immaterial and then vanished without a trace.

His facial tension once again relaxed, Charlie took on the stance of your typical bully combined with the amusement at the looks of utter astonishment of the ENTERPRISE away team. Charlie Evans once again folded skinny arms across a sunken chest.

The two inexperienced security guards began to charge past their captain in a mental mode of protection.

Once again bowing his head, rolling up his eyes, and fiercely scowling, Charlie loudly growled, "No!"

Before Kirk could react at all, both security men first froze in place, next vanishing as completely as the phasers moments before.

"What did you do?" Kirk angrily snarled, fists balled tightly at his sides as he forced himself to stay where he was.

"I sent them away. Just as I'll send everyone on this planet away...unless you do exactly as I say," Charlie said while waving hands awkwardly in a gesture saying much the same as his halting words.

Stalling for time, Kirk managed to ask, "And where might that be...Mr. Evans?"

In response, all Charlie did was grin from ear-to-ear.

"Wherever it is", McCoy muttered, "it ain't gonna be good."

END OF CHAPTER 6


	6. Chapter 7

**CRISIS ON COLONY ALPHA V**

Chapter 7

CAPTAIN'S LOG, SUPPLEMENTAL. In order to find some way of dealing with Charles Evans and keeping the worlds of the Federation safe, I have permitted him to beam up with the away team and...take control of my ship. Mr. Spock and Dr. Leonard McCoy both know that the safety of the ENTERPRISE as well as countless trillions might well rely on whatever they might discover about our young "guest". In the meantime, it will fall on me to keep him so involved with me, that any plan that might be possible to use against him might have a slim chance to actually take shape. But more than that, my one-on-one dealing with Charlie might keep him from killing any more of my people.

"This is gone on far enough, Mr. Evans," Captain Kirk bravely said to the young man sitting in his center seat in the heart of his bridge. "You must realize that Starfleet Command will, send everything they have to stop you even if it means blowing this ship and crew to atoms. As powerful as you are, you can't possibly take on everything and everyone."

With more adolescent arrogance than actual fact, Charlie Evans snapped his head toward Kirk, who was leaning against one arm of the command chair, and spat, "If they try, I'll make them all go away just like I did your phasers and your security guards! I am...a god!"

He had already heard this twisted speech before, from an officer and, more painfully, a friend whom he left buried beneath at least a ton of rock in a grave that had been "conjured" for him. Would it be possible, Kirk couldn't help but wordlessly wonder, to add a second dead "demigod" to Delta Vega?

"No, Captain," a smirking imp of a young man sneered after reading the surface thoughts of the starship commander, "it most certainly would not be possible. Maybe this Gary Mitchell person couldn't know everything going through your mind before you killed him, but you're like an open book to me. All of you are!"

Giving in to a resurgence of rage in connection to such a painful memory, not to mention the tremendous guilt it carried, Captain Kirk half-spun the center seat toward him. His face reddened from the inner battle between wanting to punch out this punk of a teenager and, somehow, not acting rashly.

"You know, Captain Kirk, I don't know why, but I sort of like you. Which is why I'm not going to turn you inside out to lie flopping like a dying fish on the deck," a smugly smiling Charles Evans said, not at all intimidated by the larger, older commanding officer.

Forcing any angry feelings deep into his mind and soul once more, Captain Kirk straightened, half-nodded, and said with a strained smile, "Thanks...Charlie. May I call you Charlie?"

"For now", Charles Evans said as he folded those skinny arms over his sunken chest. He was now wearing one of Captain Kirk's own extra gold-green uniform tunics that, not surprisingly, swallowed the boy whole. "But don't press your luck, Captain. Now, Lt. Sulu..."

Sulu's was an expression of a man who'd love to deliver a judo chop to the bony nape of the seventeen-year-old's neck. He half-swiveled toward the kid in Kirk's chair. "Aye?" The word was heaved as though it was incredibly weighty and required extra effort to verbally deliver.

"Increase speed," Charlie began, pausing just long enough to hold the bridge officers in suspense for, at most, five seconds, then, "to Warp 9."

There were audible gasps from different directions and different officers except Spock, who merely cocked a slanted eyebrow. Uhura and Scotty both swiveled almost completely around toward the centrally seated young man even as Sulu stared in utter disbelief at the order.

Kirk expressed what everyone else was already thinking. "Warp 9? That's a lot faster than the ENTERPRISE is used to, uh, Charlie. It could shake apart, if not explode."

"I won't let it," Charlie swiftly said. He looked at Sulu again and said with a no-nonsense tone. "Lt. Sulu...Warp 9. Now!"

Glancing first to Kirk, who gave him a stiff go-ahead nod, Sulu finally swiveled forward again to manipulate the proper controls of his helm console while groaning, "Aye...Warp 9."

Not one for sitting silently by while his _bairns_ were being abused, Scotty leapt to his booted feet, stepping up to the red railing separating upper tier from lower, and said with a pleading appearance and strained timbre, "Captain, the engines'll never hold together at that speed. She'll blow apart from the stress!"

"Get back to your post, Mr. Scott," Captain Kirk ordered as he watched the viewscreen's illusory display of streaking stars become much more pronounced even as the piteous whine of the engines climbed sharply.

"But Captain!"

"Scotty!" Kirk snapped even as he shot a hard glare at his chief engineer then allowed some of that tension-produced anger to melt like ice beneath the intensity of a summer sun. "Just...mind your station's tie-in screens and keep an eye on the warp engines and interconnecting matter-antimatter converters and dilithium crystal array. Please, Scotty."

Letting out a very slow, but very audible, exhalation, his face an anguished mask Scotty finally replied, "Aye, Captain." He returned to his seat and station and began running constant checks on every square centimeter of everything that was necessary for such rapid warp. "Saints preserve us," he muttered under his breath.

"Where exactly are we going in such a hurry, Charlie?" Kirk finally decided to ask, still desperately trying to stall for time so Spock and McCoy might yet manage to come up with some means of not just combating the impossibly powerful teenager, but defeat him as well, "

"That's a surprise, Captain Kirk," a half-smirking Charlie Evans said with a devilish gleam in his blue eyes. He stared intently at the navigations console, its sensors, and the precise plotting device separating the helm from navigations and continued to do so for several tensely silent seconds.

Kirk was beginning to wonder if Charlie had just then overtaxed his telepathic/telekinetic abilities and nursed the impulse to roughly drag him out of the center seat then land a hard right cross against the kid's thin jaw. Before Kirk could act upon such nascent urges of violence, Charlie brought his focus back to the here and now.

Looking over at the captain, the skinny youth stated proudly, "I have plotted my desired course into your navigations computers with my mind, Captain Kirk. No one will know where we are going...until we're nearly there."

Kirk wanted to verbally berate the boy, even if such meant he would be "sent away", but Charlie Evans' smile faltered for a moment and he promptly relinquished the center seat to Kirk while swiftly striding up toward the turbolift.

"It's yours now, Captain. At least for a while. I've got... other things to do."

Just after the turbolift doors closed behind the slender teen in the oversized gold-green command tunic, Kirk stared quizzically at Spock for an unusually long moment of tense silence.

Meantime, having taken the turbolift several decks away, a brooding Charlie Evans headed down a corridor in long, quick strides that left little doubt that he was, like most seventeen-year-old boys, very much in a hurry.

It was at that moment that the fates that Charlie, himself, had seriously altered stepped in to counter his plans in order to achieve some sort of cosmic balance.

"Oh, excuse me!"

She was wearing a red uniform skirt-tunic, petite, lovely long legs, blonde hair, blue eyes, and was drop-dead gorgeous. Before an introduction could even be made, Charles Evans plucked her name from her mind.

"Uh, hello, uh, my name's..."

"Janice Rand," Charlie quickly interjected, his eyes wild with a sense of sexual attraction he was ill equipped to understand, having lived his short life in both literal and figurative solitude. "Yeoman for the captain. Hair blonde. Eyes blue. Favorite color, pink. Favorite perfume..."

"Just who are you that you know so much about me?" she asked with a start, backing away from the younger man, both scared yet angry. "We've never met until now. What did you do, go over the personnel files or something? But... if you did... how would you know just from them that my favorite color's pink or that my favorite perfume..."

"Your mind," the suddenly grinning, youth said. He was, suddenly no longer consumed with super-powered angst, as real feelings swept through his small frame and immature mind. "Everything I needed to know about you was there, in your mind. I can give you anything you want, Janice. More than... than Captain James T. Kirk can."

Her cheeks flushing over the knowledge that this stranger would know her most intimate secrets, Yeoman Rand stammered, "Th-that's r-really none of your b-business! N-now...if y-you'll excuse me..."

Brusquely pushing past him, the beautiful young yeoman hurried away, even as he stood in her wake sniffing the re-circulated air like a lovesick bloodhound puppy.

"Janice."

Unknown to Charlie, all of this had been slyly spied by Dr. Leonard McCoy, who'd been on his way back to sickbay from one of the onboard labs where he and various medical technicians had feverishly been searching for something they could use as a weapon against the young superman.

Now, as luck would have it, a "weapon" had just presented itself in the lusciously seductive form of...

"Janice Rand?" Kirk asked while still trying to digest all of what McCoy, now on the bridge, had just told. "Are you sure, Bones? Really sure? There's no room for a mistake." Especially not when the life of my lovely young yeoman is concerned, Kirk completed silently.

"Positive, Jim," Dr. McCoy quickly replied, even as Spock joined the two on the lower tier of the bridge. "I do have 20/20 vision, you know."

"Interesting," Mr. Spock finally said, hands once again folded behind his back. "If we employed Yeoman Rand's services in this situation to sufficiently manipulate Charles Evans' human emotions, it is possible, Captain, to so distract him so that any and all psionic defenses could, indeed, be defeated."

"Leaving open an opportunity to physically attack him. Knock him out. Maybe sedate him," Kirk added while staring off pensively.

"Or, Captain, kill him," Spock said."

"What?" was McCoy's scalding response as he glowered at the taller Vulcan.

Kirk also looked at his first officer, but with considerably less vexation than his chief medical officer. "Spock, you do realize that we're talking about a seventeen-year-old boy here. He's not a monster... just misled."

"And, Captain, imbued with a power that could easily destroy the ENTERPRISE or entire planetary populations should he decide to do so. Simply 'knocking him out' will not end such an overwhelming menace to the galaxy at large," Spock was quick to counter.

"Dammit, Spock," snarled McCoy as he stepped closer to the passionless Vulcan, "how can even you be so cold-blooded? Powers or not, he's just a mixed-up kid who...!"

"Has the powers of a god," Spock interjected, inclining his head then continued to Captain Kirk. "We have been through this situation before, Captain... Jim... and the result was the loss of a life and your own near-death. Fortune favored you and us on that occasion. We cannot trust such to happen again. The boy must be killed as soon as such a possibility presents itself."

As Spock stared intently at Kirk even as McCoy scowled warningly, Captain James T. Kirk inhaled sharply as he made the second hardest decision of his career thus far.

"Call Yeoman Rand to the bridge, Mr. Spock. Bones... prepare a lethal injection and bring the hypo here. This ends now."

END OF CHAPTER 7


	7. Chapter 8

**CRISIS ON COLONY ALPHA V**

Chapter 8

CAPTAIN'S LOG, STARDATE: 1534.1. Yeoman Janice Rand had been informed of the incredibly dangerous ploy she must help execute in order to distract Charlie Evans long enough to be physically overcome so Dr. Leonard McCoy can inject him with a lethal dose of some drug. To save my crew, to save my ship, to save entire worlds, I must allow a confused seventeen-year-old boy to be... murdered.

"You know what you have to do," Captain Kirk reiterated even as Yeoman Rand swallowed hard and tried to feign a bravery normally associated with either security personnel or command grade officers.

"Yes, Captain, I'm to 'come on' to Charlie so that you can attack him and keep him off-balance," Rand meekly managed.

"While I kill the kid with an overdose mixture of phenobarbital, propylhexedrine, and methylphenidate. Meaning I should go from medical man to murderer in less than five seconds. Thanks, Jim," McCoy managed, holding up the gleaming metal hypospray, though it was painfully clear that he considered this to be what it was.

Before Kirk could attempt to console his chief medical officer, Sulu called from the helm, "Captain... Captain!"

"What is it, Lieutenant?" Captain Kirk asked with a touch more trepidation than he'd like.

"We're slowing down. We've gone from Warp 9 to Warp 6 in just a couple of seconds. And we're still slowing! At this rate, we'll reach sublight in less than a minute."

"That can only mean one thing," Kirk said.

"We are approaching our 'secret destination,'" Spock stated while getting up from his station seat to peer down into the scanner hood, his dark Vulcan eyes, lit up by a luminous blue glow, quickly deciphering the steady stream of sensor data.

Already suspecting the answer, Kirk stepped to the red railing of the science station, while remaining on the lower tier, and anxiously asked, "What is it, Mr. Spock?"

Straightening and turning, Spock said succinctly, "Earth, Captain."

Suddenly realizing the awful truth, Captain Kirk stepped forward to see the familiar glow of Sol even as the outermost planetary giants came gradually into view.

"Earth..."

Dr. McCoy, at first against this plot to kill a young boy of seventeen, now realized just how important it was to stop him by any means necessary.

He knew, even as the others on the bridge knew, that once the ENTERPRISE was within transporter range of Earth, Charles Evans planned to punish the entire planet for what Spock had already retrieved, barely an hour ago, in regards to a fatally failed exploratory mission to Thasus.

A fact he'd attributed to Earth and the Federation.

No wonder the boy was so filled with murderous rage and inconsolable angst. Spock and Kirk had been right to create a plan that would culminate in the quick, painless demise of Charlie Evans.

"Now, Captain Kirk," Charlie arrogantly began as he swiftly stepped out of the just-arrived turbolift, "it's time to avenge myself and my parents by..."

Stopping short at the sight of the smiling Yeoman Rand, Charlie's hatred vanished in light of the puppy-love feelings once again resurfacing within both his mind and soul. With a huge, toothy smile, Charlie Evans breathed, "Janice. You're here. With me."

"Uh, yes," Janice Rand managed, reminding herself how much was riding on her performance. "I thought about what you said, below, and I think I would like to..."

Though she didn't finish the false statement in words, it became unnecessary as her thoughts were so readily perceived by Charlie.

"Janice", he said again as if such was the only word he could successfully form, before stepping closer and reaching out to gently stroke her beautiful face with the back of curled-inward fingers, blue eyes wide and shining with just the sort of love most could only dream about. "I shall make you a paradise to rule. Once I have sent everyone away on Earth...you and I shall dominate it as king and queen. And with the ENTERPRISE at my beck and call, other worlds will fall before us. Together...we shall rule a galaxy."

It was then, just as Charlie Evans had reached what, for him, could be considered a moment of romantic bliss, that Kirk grabbed him roughly by the gold-green uniform tunic and jerked him nearly off his booted feet. Then promptly landed a short series of punches that ended with a dazed and puzzled seventeen-year-old plopping hard onto the deck of the bridge.

Captain Kirk stepped swiftly out of the way to allow McCoy to drop directly to one knee in preparation for pressing the business end of a hypospray filled with death against his arm. But before the savage act could be completed...

"Ahgggg!"

"Bones! Gyiiiiiii!"

"Captain! Jim! Uhhhnnnnnn!"

As fear froze the rest in place, all eyes watched as McCoy, Kirk, and Spock writhed in some sort of nonphysical anguish on their knees upon the deck. Whatever Charles Evans, now on his feet again, had done to them clearly didn't involve physical damage. Not yet.

"Ya bloody bastard!"

No sooner had Scotty charged toward the super-youth than the enraged and heartbroken Charlie psychically sent the chief engineer soaring back, as if caught by the winds of a planet-based hurricane, to slam hard against the bridge wall then, no longer completely conscious, sliding down to the deck.

"Captain!"

Now it was Sulu's turn to be psionically tossed aside as if he were a small stuffed animal thrust away by an angry toddler throwing a tantrum.

"Charlie, stop!"

Glaring hard at the pretty yeoman, his bright and toothy smile now an enraged frown, Charlie snarled, "I loved you, Janice. I would've given you anything. Everything. But you... you..."

Before Rand could react at all, Charlie bowed his head, rolled his eyes up tightly beneath a deeply furrowed brow, and unleashed his mind-energy to cause her to vanish.

Uhura gasped audibly, one manicured hand going instinctively to her mouth, as she saw what she would've thought utterly impossible: one human being using his strange powers to make another disappear from reality.

Not to mention what his multi-tasking telepathic/telekinetic mind was doing to Captain Kirk, Dr. McCoy, and Mr. Spock.

END OF CHAPTER 8


	8. Chapter 9

**CRISIS ON COLONY ALPHA V**

Chapter 9

"Ruth," Kirk said with a hitch in his voice as the beautiful woman he'd once known and loved stood a few feet away from him, even as a second ex-love approached and caused him to shakily gasp, "Carol?"

He wanted so much to walk to both women, neither of whom he'd seen in years, but something was holding him in place in this featureless construct that, unbeknownst to Kirk, was totally taking place within his own mind at the psionic insistence and direction of Charles Evans.

It was then that a third old-flame walked into view. One who'd been the only woman in his life, thus far, who'd actually struck some semblance of fear into his heart. "Janice... Lester," Kirk managed, as every fiber of his being tried to tell him that something terrible was about to take place and Janice Lester would be the cause.

"I couldn't be a part of your world of starships, James, so I'll destroy this world of loving memory," Lester snarled spitefully.

Before Captain Kirk could even cry out for her to stop, Lester quickly produced an older-model phaser and proceeded to disintegrate both Carol Marcus and Ruth.

"Noooooooooo!"

While Kirk curled into a sitting fetal position on the bridge's deck, sobbing with more sadness than the starship commander had ever experienced, Spock's usually well-ordered mind was undergoing a similar inward scene of half-imagined/half-remembered romantic angst.

"T'Pring, I cannot wait to see you. To be with you. To love you," Spock bemoaned with emotionality not experienced since he was a small boy on Vulcan.

The Vulcan woman, no longer the child with whom he'd mind-melded stood as elegantly as a princess, regarding him as dispassionately as he should be regarding her.

Though he was not yet in the throes of plak tow, Spock nonetheless felt an illogical longing for her swell like the tide during a storm out to sea. And to make matters worse, someone other than his betrothed, with whom he had "experimented" early on, soon stepped to the lovely Vulcan's side.

"Leila Kalomi," he breathed heavily with a combination of passion and shame, one as deep as the other. Spock felt for the human female whom, though he'd never admit it nor speak of it even to Captain Kirk, had shared something together. Something that Leila had believed to be love, but which Spock knew to be merely a young man's unwelcome desires. "No. It can't be. One I left on Vulcan...the other I left on Earth. This...is...illogical."

While the usually cerebral Mr. Spock shook, while on his knees, like a petulant child tempestuously opposing those somehow superior to him, Dr. McCoy cried candidly with no sign of self-control or chagrin.

"Nancy," he muttered within the confines of his own mind as Charlie psionically enticed the long-remembered visage of his lost first love, not seen for some twenty-five years and who was quite possibly the greatest love of Dr. McCoy's dolorous life.

"Hello, Plum," Nancy said with a smile and a lyrical lilt to her voice. Thus forcing McCoy to realize that he had used the excuse of a career via Starfleet Medical to disguise a morbid dread of commitment to anything not medically related.

"Dear God...Nancy," McCoy whimpered as emotions he'd held dammed up within a self-tortured soul threatened to explosively release themselves. "I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have left. I should've stayed with you... on Earth. I could've built a medical practice there. I...I shouldn't have entered Starfleet. I should've never signed on board a starship."

"No, Leonard, but you did. And you not only left me to hide in the sickbay of an active starship constantly traveling from one distant star to another...you left...her," Nancy's ghost said with an agreeable smile betrayed by a deeper tone of sharp rebuke.

His worst nightmare was coming true and he was incapable of escaping this time. This time he had to stand and face the one person he had probably wronged the worst. And that person was not Nancy Carter. It was...

"Hello, Father," the pretty young dark-haired woman said with a slight Southern drawl that sounded eerily familiar.

"Joanna," came the hurtfully hissed name of someone he should've settled down for yet from whom he probably ran the furthest. His only child. His daughter. Dressed in a civilian-style nurse's uniform not too dissimilar to Chapel's, complete with the centuries old Red Cross symbol situated prominently above the left breast. "I did write."

"And I wrote back, Father," Joanna solemnly intoned with a hurt jeer of rationalized rejection, "but I would've rather had my father at least in the same solar system with me. Or, maybe, to settle on a single planet somewhere within the Federation so I could've visited with you. But on a starship, where you were in constant motion and involved in classified activities involving the vaunted USS ENTERPRISE? Well... now I'm not sure I ever want to see you again, Dr. Leonard McCoy."

Before Dr. McCoy could find words to heal the wounds he'd left in his interstellar wake, both Nancy and Joanna turned and walked away, gradually disappearing into a featureless distance. "Wait!" he finally managed, sobs threatening to choke the words he'd fought to utter after so very long. "Don't go! I can change! I swear! I'm willing to take a chance! Take a chance that I won't be hurt... the way I was when my own father died so slowly... so horribly... with my help. God forgive me. Please... don't... go..."

"And now it's their turn!" Charlie sadistically pledged, turning away from the three sobbing, struggling superior officers of the illustrious starship he now controlled in order to glare hard at the displayed image of the Earth growing in the viewscreen as the ENTERPRISE approached.

Just then, every system, save life-support, on the mighty starship suddenly went offline. The ENTERPRISE was stopped cold in space some ten thousand kilometers from high orbital status about the Earth.

END OF CHAPTER 9


	9. Chapter 10

**CRISIS ON COLONY ALPHA V**

Chapter 10

"What's going on?" exclaimed a suddenly nervous seventeen-year-old boy. "Make everything work again! I command you! I command you!" But no matter how much he tried to will it so, nothing on the bridge or anywhere else in the starship would come under his power again.

"No, a horrified Charlie began as Kirk, McCoy, and Spock again regained dominance over their most painful feelings and nightmarish memories to slowly stand once more.

Looking around, Kirk definitely felt violated since he, as commanding officer, had been forced to reveal he was not the paragon of strength and restraint that he felt was a necessary perception by his crew. Especially on the bridge.

So, too, was McCoy shamed over the bald-faced fact he'd just exposed the deepest, darkest secrets within his self-tortured soul before those on the bridge. He openly wiped away a stray tear left glistening on his scowling countenance. "Damn."

Lastly, but much more profoundly affected, Spock realized that he had just allowed the consciously suppressed human half of his mind and heart to be openly observed by the bridge-based personnel.

Of the three psychically effected officers, only Spock swiftly resumed his normal stoic stance, as well as resuming a stony expression upon his Vulcan features.

"What's happening?" Captain Kirk quickly asked, finally in control of himself. He noted both Scotty and Sulu rising to their feet from where they'd just collapsed onto the bridge deck. "Lt. Uhura?"

Shaking off the shock of all that'd happened, especially these past few minutes, Lt. Uhura finally managed, "Well, Captain, for some unknown reason, just as we were nearing Earth orbit, all systems ceased to function. And Mr. Evans doesn't seem to have the ability to regain control, but actually 'fears' something."

Yeoman Janice Rand, slowly, became material and then, fully, reappeared with an expression of utter confusion on her face. "What... happened?"

"That's what we're all asking, Yeoman," Kirk said, secretly glad that Rand had not been on the bridge during his period of shame. "What... is... happening?"

That question, now dominating all the minds gathered about the boy who'd stumbled into the middle of the bridge's lower level, right next to the empty center seat, with arms out to his sides and hands open with palms up in a pleading manner. The realized shock on his youthful face became the affectation of someone about to actually meet the worst memory from his or her short existence. "Nooooooo! I'm sorry! I didn't mean to...! I would never again do...! Please! Let me stay!"

While the Human contingent of the bridge crew was clearly and utterly perplexed, Spock not only understood but also actually perceived from his own Vulcan telepathic perspective.

"Captain," he said with a knitted brow even as he lifted a single hand to point in the direction of the viewscreen, causing not only Kirk, but also all the bridge personnel to stare in amazement at what gradually formed on their side of the viewscreen.

A shimmering, iridescently glowing head of what appeared to be a humanoid with thick white hair semi-solidified in a fashion that, curiously, seemed eerily familiar to Kirk.

"Captain Kirk." A deep, godly voice reverberated throughout the circular bridge as if it came from every conceivable direction at once and, at the same instant, from none. "We have set right all that had been wronged. Unfortunately, it was necessary for us to destroy the science ship you call ANTARES. Such a severe alteration of your time line by the boy had to be corrected in order to set right all the future probabilities of your race."

Charlie stood frozen in both remembered fear and conceptualized dread before the enormous noncorporeal head still shimmering before the viewscreen. Kirk stepped down into the lower tier of his bridge to brave a confrontation.

Spock had already closed his eyes, cleared his mind, and allowed that telepathic part of his Vulcan self to slowly reach out to make intangible contact with an actual Thasian entity.

"What do you mean...you destroyed the ANTARES? Are you saying...that you purposely killed an entire innocent crew?" Kirk asked.

"Yes," thundered the shimmering representation of a Thasian head whose transparent face denoted not one iota of appropriate remorse. "It was necessary, Captain. Those whom Charles Evans would have obliterated with his power must truly die. To do otherwise would damage your time line as readily and as certainly as the physical disappearance of those not originally affected. Such an explanation is as simple as your current level of understanding can comprehend, Captain Kirk. And now Charles, you must return with us to Thasus. There, we can contain and control your conflict of irrational urges versus your vast mental power."

"No, please," Charlie pleaded, no longer an oppressive power-mad menace but, to all who watched, simply a terrified teenager. "Captain Kirk... please... don't let them take me back there. Please... I'll be good. I promise."

Against his better judgment Kirk gently suggested, "Couldn't you let him go back to Colony Alpha V? With your powers, you could erase the memories of the populace and his immediate family so they would accept him back into their number. He could learn to use his abilities only for good. He could..."

"No, Captain Kirk," the shimmering Thasian rumbled throughout the bridge with the intonation of a god speaking with a lowly worshiper. "So long as there is the smallest chance that Charles would use the abilities we granted him for selfishly destructive purposes, your kind would not rest until you attempted to destroy him, thus destroying yourselves in the process. No. Charles Evans must return with us. Come, Charles."

"I want to stay!" Charlie Evans cried pitifully even as his entire painfully thin body began to slowly dematerialize prior to vanishing entirely.

With the shimmering energy-representation of a white-haired humanoid head next fading from view and, everyone instinctively knew, their very reality, Charles Evans and the Thasians were...

"Gone."

Even as Captain Kirk breathed such an obvious observation, sharing the sadness and regret felt by everyone, Spock ended his telepathic contact with what, essentially, had been the totality of the Thasian species which had, centuries ago, reached the apex of evolutionary growth where physical bodies were no longer requisite. But Spock discovered much more than that during the mental link with such seemingly godlike entities...

CAPTAIN'S LOG, STARDATE: 1534.4. It's been hours since the unbelievable events involving Thasians and a misguided, yet extremely powerful, seventeen-year-old boy had taken place. Mr. Spock has finished analyzing all the gathered data, via ship's sensors and his tricorder scans, and has requested a special meeting involving only Dr. McCoy and myself. I can't help but feel this might not be good news.

"Alright, Mr. Spock, let's have it," Kirk said the moment he, McCoy, and Spock took their respective places about the oddly shaped conference table.

With the look of a professor about to begin an intellectual Q-and-A with his students, Spock lifted a slanted eyebrow and began.

"Captain, to put this in proper scientific perspective, I should like to begin with the universally understood concept of the Fabric of Space-Time from which all cosmological events can be comprehensively calculated and observed."

"Sure, based upon Albert Einstein's mathematical theories of some three centuries ago", nodded Kirk while leaning back in his seat and listening intently.

"What the devil's that got to do with everything we've just gone through, Spock?" McCoy said with a cynical scowl.

Spock heaved a barely audible sigh of quite logical frustration, then said, "As we all now know, from the vantage point of the 23rd Century's of scientifically measured and cataloged facts, the subatomic world predicted via quantum theorems, regarding the infinitely smaller components of the subatomic…"

Kirk nodded curtly and said, "Sure. It's what we've all come to know as subatomic 'strings'. What about them?"

Leaning forward, calmly clasping hands atop the conference table, Spock said, "I now realize, from my sustained telepathic contact with the collective Thasian consciousness, it should be considered the Fabric of Quantum Activity which merges seamlessly with the grander Fabric of Space-Time. But, most astonishingly of all, I had learned of a third merged 'Fabric'. One that, on the surface, seemed highly improbable from a purely scientific standpoint and, therefore, relegated to the level of philosophy or, worse, religion."

"Dammit, Spock, just spit it out. I've got real work to do in sickbay." Spat McCoy impatiently.

Speaking in a tone meant to mediate the overall tension created by this briefing, Kirk said, "Go ahead, Spock."

Now lifting his hands, elbows planted on the table's top, Spock pyramided his fingers by the tips of each, then proceeded in the same professorial fashion with knitted brow.

"In point of fact, gentlemen, there does, apparently, exist a Fabric of Life-Consciousness."

Before Spock could continue, McCoy shot forward in his seat with an expression of disdain and said, "Whoa, whoa, wait a minute. Spock are you trying to tell us, in some fanciful Vulcan manner, that there is a 'Heaven' and 'souls' and other such pious nonsense?"

"Bones…"

"It is understandable, Captain, that the Doctor should hold such a passionate counterpoint in light of all that the combined sciences of hundreds of Federation worlds has taught us regarding such conscientious notions." Spock said simply, as McCoy caved beneath a chastising glare from Kirk.

Now attempting to finish without further objection, Spock said, "Just as it is true of the much more accepted and understood Fabric of Space-Time and conjoined Fabric of Quantum Activity, Doctor, Captain, so, too, the Fabric of Life-Consciousness is 'dented'. But not by stars and planets or other such physical objects of mass. Rather by Life, beginning with the microbial and extending throughout the higher forms of true consciousness."

Both Kirk and McCoy now listened with growing interest holding out the promise of acceptance regarding all that Spock had learned from his non-tactile mind meld with the Thasians.

"The more significantly advanced the Life or Consciousness, the greater these 'dents' and, given the existence of a preponderant Fabric of Life-Consciousness, the viewpoint that physical death was the absolute end of conscious existence now appears to simply not be the case."

"Wait, wait, wait, Spock. It still sounds like you're gonna say that there's some sort of 'afterlife'. Next you'll be saying there's such a thing as 'reincarnation', for pity's sake," said McCoy with an impatient grumble.

"In point of fact, Doctor, the admittedly unscientific notion of 'reincarnation' is, when viewed in the broadest possible sense regarding this third 'Fabric', to be true. But only in view of the fact that, when any life-consciousness 'dent' expires physically, such allows that part of the Fabric of Life-Consciousness to return to a temporarily 'non-dented' state whereupon…"

"My God, Jim, he is saying we're all 'born again'!" exclaimed McCoy, throwing up his hands in disgust.

"I don't think so, Bones." Kirk said simply, then returned his full attention to his science officer even as he, too, clasped his hands atop the table. "Go on, Spock."

Spock inhaled deeply, sat with back straight and head held with an inclination of scientific pride, then proceeded with his startling revelation.

"At some point, newly-born life-consciousnesses and, in particular, newly-born sentiences, essentially recreate a 'dent' left behind by death in much the same way an exploded star would, in time, become new stars that, in turn, once again 'dent' the Fabric of Space-Time. As to being able to remember a past 'incarnation', such could be somewhat possible in regards to the fact that all previous sentient entities allow life-gathered 'memories' to become an integral part of the overall Fabric of Life-Consciousness."

No longer scowling as deeply nor as willing to interrupt, McCoy's countenance took on a look of begrudging acceptance only slightly less receptive as that of Kirk.

Continuing, Spock said, "Furthermore, gentlemen, for extremely evolved and advanced sentient races, such as those who once physically occupied Thasus, as well as other such highly-evolved noncorporeal races, such would merge, cohesively, with the Fabric of Life-Consciousness in a manner where 'denting' would no longer be interrupted. In other words, they remain fully cognizant energy-forms for eternity."

"Eternity? What about when the universe, itself, finally comes to an end, Mr. Spock?" asked Kirk even as the intently listening McCoy's expression echoed a similar query.

Spock once again leaned forward, clasping his hands, and carefully weighed his words before saying, "My non-tactile mind-meld with the Thasians has revealed the truth about the 'birth' and 'death', as well as subsequent 'rebirths' of this, as well as an infinite number of other, universes. It would appear that the formerly referenced, by Humans, 'Big Bang' beginning was, and is, the actual reemergence of a previously 'dying' universe's collective 'Fabrics' occurring in an infinite number of parallel or even alternate-reality universes."

"How, exactly, Mr. Spock?" asked McCoy, now thoroughly engrossed beyond his own personal prejudices.

If Spock could experience the Human emotion of gratification, McCoy's abrupt change in demeanor would've most certainly caused such to occur. Instead, Spock merely continued his logic-based revelation.

"As to the 'death' of our universe, it would now seem that, after trillions of years of cosmological time, all galaxies would become dark due to the burning out of all average-sized stars," Spock said with a scientifically excited gleam in his dark Vulcan eyes.

"While those stars massive enough to collapse in on themselves and create 'black holes', with infinitely small point-singularities, would inevitably merge with the supermassive black holes dominating the centers of all galaxies. Which, at this unthinkably far-flung point in Time, would be near-infinitely far apart from one another. Post-stellar islands populated completely by so many mass-born black hole singularities that most would, logically, merge to form what could be called 'galactically-massive black holes'. Whose..."

"Whose infinitely small singularity points would," said Kirk with McCoy becoming almost as captivated over such new scientific probabilities.

"Would explosively expel energy and matter into other universal existences, including the life-energies representative of the never-ending Fabric of Life-Consciousness and, quite logically, those energy-beings who had obtained 'immortality'. All of which would, literally, begin new universal-growth phases after literally trillions more 'Big Bang' beginnings. Thus the universal 'life-death' cycle of this and all other simultaneously extant universes are, as well as all Life and Consciousness, quite accurately eternal."

Now pausing at the end of his in-depth explanation, which the Vulcan had purposely abridged for better understandable, Spock observed both Kirk and McCoy with a single eyebrow lifting again.

Curiously, it would be McCoy who would finally speak with a single word that, quite naturally, caused something akin to amusement within Spock's otherwise unemotional mind.

"Fascinating!"

END


	10. HOW CHARLES EVANS BECAME CHARLIE X

**HOW CHARLES EVANS BECAME CHARLIE X!**

by: Dan Bivens

AUTOMATED COMPUTER RECORDING, STARDATE: 1121.3. The science ship GLADIATOR had reached its predetermined exploration point pre-designated as Thasus. Unfortunately, severe vitiation of basic systems occurred, both those dealing with sublight propulsion, as well as structural integrity, due to an unknown collision preceding entry into high orbital status. GLADIATOR had quickly crashed, killing all crewpersons, including objective directors: Dr. Hayden Evans and his wife, Dr. Hayley Evans, who had given live birth during the first year of the three year, at Warp Two relativistic velocities, expedition. Thus a single survivor now exists in the embodiment of three-year-old Charles Evans. Distress signal has been set on automatic using pre-subspace radio, due to said extensive system damage and, now, rapidly dwindling power supply. End of automated computer report.

Charlie Evans was but a toddler of three. Entirely too young to truly realize exactly what had happened to his parents. Parents who now lay lifeless amidst the remainder of dead bodies comprising the crew compliment of the now-crashed science ship.

Fortunately, Charlie, being the progeny of genius stock, was an undeniably intelligent individual fully capable of not only learning how to utilize the still-accessible micro-computers, even though the primary computer was no longer fully functional, but essentially surviving against all odds.

Thus finishing what his parents started, in their off-time duty-hours during the three-year trip via Warp Two relativistic speeds, which slightly exceeded 8-billion kilometers per hour. Three years due to the indisputable certitude that there remained thousands of trillions of kilometers left for the GLADIATOR to ostensibly traverse in order to reach far-distant Thasus.

Such scientific things, however, were not of immediate interest to a three-year-old, so Charlie merely learned how to completely command that all-important, to flesh-and-bone sentiences, Human/humanoid vocally-conveyed "conversation".

"How are you today, Charlie?" said the computerized voice from unseen speakers in the somewhat still intact control area of the otherwise destroyed science ship.

"I am doing fine," replied a lonely little boy with a strained smile and bright blue eyes. "How are you today, computer?"

"I am still functional, thank you," the computer responded. "What would you like to learn today?"

Even though there was still a lot to learn regarding a great many areas of Human-to-Human interaction and emotional comprehension, especially dealing with one's Self, to this young boy, who'd so closed himself off in the passing year or so, only one particular point of information continued to nag his conscious considerations.

"Tell me about…Earth."

Such communicative activities would have to give way to the all-important aspect of learning how to properly operate the food distribution devices still somewhat serviceable in post-crash, for such was essential for the growing boy's physical survival.

At a specific point, Charlie Evans, as highly intelligent as ever, learned exactly what he could collect from his jungle-like surroundings that could be consumed without substantial sickness or potential poisoning. But even this had its limits.

Limits which, once reached by the lone adolescent who, at this point, had reached the ripe Human age of ten, would bring his brilliance and strength, considering his situation for the past seven years of absolute solitude, under the direct attention of noncorporeal entities who, mere centuries earlier, where physical masters of their pre-jungle planet.

Even though, unbeknownst to a Human youth not yet venturing very far from the crashed ship that had been his home, beneath the thick overgrowth and old-growth trees existed the crumbling ruins of vast cities once physically populated by the people of Thasus.

"What are you?"

That reverberant voice seemed to speak from ten thousand different directions at the same exact instant and also seemed to somehow reach into the very depths of Charlie's consciousness, if not into his singular soul.

"Wh-what?" stammered the ten-year-old, who, due to the immutable truth that he'd been reduced to sporadic vegetarian eating, just enough to simply stay alive, and had grown gaunt. The only clothing he was capable of draping about his gangly figure being a strange mixture of surviving articles of clothing worn initially by the male contingent of the crew, including his long-dead father.

"What are you?" the thunderous voice stated with even more emphasis and godliness than had initially been telepathically transmitted. "You are not native to our world! You are…similar…but still, somehow…different!"

"I," began the boy as curiosity canceled out irrational dread, "am a Human. My name is…Charlie. Charlie Evans. Who…what…are you?"

After a tension-inducing several seconds of very heavy silence, the cosmic collectivity of super-sentience existing in and around Thasus solidified, sort of, in a shimmering head the size of a boulder, but with nary a sign of true substance, with thick white hair, representative of their common physicality several centuries ago, seemingly spoke to the adolescent from scant meters away.

"We are…Thasians," said the less-vociferous voice now evidently emanating from the scintillating ghost-head, even as a wide-eyed Human child stared in abstract awe capped by all-consuming curiosity. "Once…we dominated this planet in a physical form similar to yourself. Once, like those we sense had died in the crashed vessel some half-a-kilometer distant, we lived. We loved. Now…we have evolved beyond such unnecessary emotionalism. Such psychological and physical fragility. Now…we are one with all that exists in this…or any other…universe. As we now, through my long lost substantially resized facial presentation, speak with you…we also visit ourselves upon more worlds in more galaxies in more universes than your kind could possibly conceive. Would you like to learn our ways, Charles Evans? Would you desire…supreme power? Such would make your continued physical existence here much more than merely…bearable."

What adult could say "no" to such a cosmic proposition? Who could truly turn their backs upon the Absolute? Certainly not a ten year old boy existing in such agonizing solitude upon a planet only recently, in Federation history, discovered by deep-space probes which, inevitably, brought the GLADIATOR and its crew of scientists and xeno-archeologists across the vast expanse of space-time.

Such prompted remembered tales, told and retold to him via the no-longer-accessible micro-computers when he was younger still, wherein some magical something offered unlimited personal power to its flesh-and-blood liberator.

Blue eyes were as wide as his healthily toothy smile, as the rangy sandy-haired kid was quick to say, "Yes! Yes!"

"So be it!" answered the vibrant voice of a veritable god who was actually about to bestow such cosmic omnipotence upon the Human child swallowed whole in clothes not even his. "You, Charles Evans, shall now share the same access to energies far beyond your mortal kin. Behold!"

Suddenly, even as the hovering head's ghostly outline began to gradually dissolve, blinding energy more brilliant, though not dangerously so, than the solar radiation being given off by Thasus' ancient sun.

Energies which painfully permeated both the mind and body of young Charles Evans in what he had not known would be so singularly agonizing…

"Gyyyyiiiiiiiii!"

Such should have been expected: the Thasian race achieved their passage into a noncorporeal condition of eternal existence after centuries of conclusive evolutionary accretion; for Charlie, however, such was taking place in the span of seconds that, to him, felt like half-an-eternity.

Finally, and not a moment too soon for a pain-racked Charles Evans, both the brilliance suffusing his slight physical form not only gratefully, gradually dissipated, but actually insinuated itself into the mind belonging to the boy. Not to mention the boy's body and, quite possibly, his personal soul.

Whatever had happened to him, Charles Evans now opened his eyes to see his surroundings, once so seemingly dismal, as the energy-rich world of jungle-growth that it, in fact, was. Replete with an innumerable amount of life-forms from the simplest insects to the highest animal form currently existing in the evolutionary wake of the Thasians.

Not only the present of the adopted planet that had become, like it or not, his home, but the past as well. Looking with eyes beyond eyes, Charles could actually "see" the vast super-scientific, verge-of-eternity flesh-and-bone humanoids that had once so filled the pre-forest surface of the extremely old Class-M world.

Beings who'd spread themselves throughout the surrounding cosmos in much the same manner as the Federation and Starfleet, at what would be, by way of actual comparison, at their infancy in regards to space exploration and planetary colonization.

A race who had spent several million years as supreme flesh-and-blood beings with at least a single million of that having been spent practicing sciences incomprehensible to Humans or even Vulcans.

Beings who, just as the shimmering energy representative of this super-race had said, as of a few short centuries earlier, completed their ultimate evolutionary rise that all sentient civilizations would, so long as they do not obliterate themselves over the long millennia, one day ultimately attain.

But Charlie's command of the cosmic energies infused within was nowhere near evolved enough to completely comprehend the daily lives of the once-physical Thasians. Not by a long shot.

Still, he did, at the most basic stage, understand enough to know that, even before they became eternal entities of energy…the Thasian civilization was incomparably great.

But enough of allowing freshly-endowed-with-peerless power senses "see" the past of those who believed themselves to have saved the young boy from certain, dismal demise. It was now time for Charlie X, as he would come to secretly call himself, to make more practical use of his supreme telepathic/telekinetic abilities.

First and foremost, Charlie X would materialize more than enough food, of all imaginable shapes, colors, and delectable tastes, so that he would never again experience the palpable pangs of hunger.

As to any semblance of sane activities to help pass the time that would drag so agonizingly slow, while the boy continued to grow ever-closer to what, one day, would be a young man…

"Hello, mother…father," said the now thirteen year old youth still, secretly at least, calling himself Charlie X, to the fleeting forms his still-too-young-though-unbelievably-powerful mind made seemingly real via the telekinetic manipulation of molecular structures that were formerly inanimate articles such as trees or brush or rocks. "Today is my birthday…I think. I'm now officially a teenager…whatever that is."

The unreal-though-physical facsimiles of Hayden and Hayley Evans, both with ever-present, ever-vacuous smiles on their too-perfect faces, said exactly what their omnipotent, though not omniscient, son always anticipated.

"That is great, Charlie," said the seemingly solid specter of the thirteen-year-old's father, unable, via his own accord, to wrap actual physical arms about the always-lonely boy. "You deserve to be happy."

"Yes, Charlie," chimed in Hayley Evans, right on cue just as the telepathic/telekinetic thoughts of the cosmically empowered pubescent always expected. "You are the best boy any mother could want."

Too bad Charlie X was, at such a point and under such conditions, merely all-powerful and nowhere near all-knowing. Otherwise he would've been able to do what the collectively cosmic Thasians could've done, if they so desired: not only bodily bring long-dead parents back to illusive life, though their emotional/intellectual reactions and responses were all merely two-dimensional expressions of furtive recollection, but recreate them so completely that they would literally live once again.

For that matter, had Charlie X developed and sharpened his psionic powers enough, he would no longer experience emotional loneliness and, quite the contrary, could psychically visit and experience the entirety of not only his universal reality, but an innumerable amount of others.

"I hate it here," grumbled the thirteen-year-old even as he allowed the parental molecular constructs to return to their natural states. "No matter how powerful the Thasians made me…I'm still all alone in the middle of a jungle-planet."

For the next four years, from age thirteen to seventeen, Charles Evans a.k.a. Charlie X would undergo a dangerous deepening of dark emotional turmoil. So much so that by the time the automated distress radio continued out into normal space-time, rather than the much more readily receivable subspace transmission, had been picked up by a second science ship that happened to be passing close by, his potential for extending punishment had become far too anchored within his troubled thoughts.

So consumed was Charlie with self-generated supersensory creations-made-real, more or less, that when two slowly materialized, amidst a transporter's wailing whine, a few meters from his telekinetically-created lean-to…

"Hello," said the tan-tunic wearing man with rugged good looks whom a somber seventeen-year-old believed to be yet another tangible trick of his super-mind, "my name's Captain Ramart, commanding officer of the science ship ANTARES. We picked up your normal radio wave distress signal as we passed within a few dozen light-years on our way to…"

"You," began Charlie with a growing grin and widening eyes. "Are you…real?"

Glancing at his fellow officer, Tom Nellis, and sharing puzzled looks for all of six or seven seconds, Captain Ramart turned back toward the teen in the overly large wraparound patchwork coat, which he'd psychically created from existing materials, and said with a smile, "Uh, yes. We're as 'real' as you. What's your name?"

"Charlie," said the sandy-haired, blue-eyed, broadly smiling seventeen-year-old and, then, correcting himself slightly. "Uh, Charles Evans," he managed not to say, instead, his secret nomenclature of Charlie X. That was just for him.

Not fully understanding whether it was sheer coincidence which had brought them, by way of the previous signal sent, for a time, by surviving systems of the crashed GLADIATOR, or if, somehow, his own super-psychic Self had led them in from the depths of warp-traversed space-time.

To be honest, under the solitary circumstances, Charlie X could've cared less.

"Will you take me with you?" he asked so innocently any devilishly destructive inclinations could not be readily perceived by Ramart and Nellis.

Thus, both grinning graciously, Captain Ramart replied with a nod, "Yeah, kid. Go get your stuff and we'll see to it you get to wherever you may have any family."

"Thanks, Captain Ramart," said Charlie just as he was about to trot off to gather up his meager belongings, contained within a silvery duffel of his own psionic assemblage of native planetary particles. "You'll never know how much I appreciate this."

Unfortunately for the crew of the ANTARES, Charlie X would show such "appreciation" by causing their destruction soon after being beamed over to a starship Charlie had yet to even visualize.

END


End file.
